‘It’s outrageous’: Tory civil war sparks fury as Sunak urged to end windfarm ban

“It needs to deploy any additional revenues collected under our windfall tax on energy companies towards a massive scale-up of clean energy, and support our call to close the tax relief loopholes on big oil and gas companies in the North Sea.”

While there has been a de facto ban on new onshore wind farms since 2015, a number of backbenchers, including former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, have been calling for the Government to change its position. 

COP26 president Alok Sharma, one of the rebel voices from within the Conservative Party, has said: “Onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of renewable power and will help to bolster the UK’s energy security.”

But during Mr Sunak’s summer campaign for the Tory leadership, he pledged to “scrap plans to relax the onshore wind” ban. He said back in July: “Wind energy will be an important part of our strategy, but I want to reassure communities that as prime minister I would scrap plans to relax the ban on onshore wind in England, instead focusing on building more turbines offshore.”

READ MORE: UK risks losing £4-5bn worth of cheap energy

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1702639/tory-civil-war-sunak-onshore-windfarm-backbench-rebellion